Brian Suarez On Allies For Everyone

For a guy who doesn’t like to throw parties, Brian Suarez, musical mastermind behind Allies for Everyone, certainly gets invited to a lot. In addition to his work on TV music production, Suarez performs as a DJ at an average of 2-3 parties and gigs per month upon invitation.

“I think my favorite part is just playing shows and DJing out,” he shares. “In New York, in terms of gigs and stuff, they usually come up the month of. It’s usually consistently two or three gigs a month. If there are promoters that dig it, they’ll invite me to come back.”

Suarez’s invites aren’t even limited to our fair United States.

“The only time I ever played overseas was also really because someone approached me and was like, ‘We want you to come to Portugal and play here, here and here. We got it all covered. Just come.'”

In addition to Portugal, Suarez’s resume includes shows at Yotel, Slake, and various other Manhattan clubs as well as his personal favorite, a high school student’s New Jersey basement.

“I feel like everything has its own cool factor,” he maintains. “I think the coolest place I’ve ever DJed, maybe 5 years ago, a kid I met who came to one of my parties lived somewhere in New Jersey and invited a friend and I to come DJ there. We rented a minivan to go there. The party had maybe 25 high school students and it was just this dingy, weird, superdark, multi-room dungeon-y basement. I enjoy anything that reminds me of an old Prodigy video.”

Suarez isn’t just a popular DJ, though. His musical project, Allies for Everyone, has a rap sheet dating back to his first EP under that name in 2011. As Allies for Everyone, originally intended as an open opportunity to collaborate with other artists, Suarez has continued to release various EPs and remixes throughout each year and has already released two remixes in 2014. But he’s been at it a lot longer than Allies for Everyone has been around.

Photo credit to magneticmag.com

“The first actual releases I had were maybe in 2003 on a German label, Dekathlon out of Munich,” Suarez explains. “It was a different project. I made maybe four tracks, sent them to maybe five labels and I met with two, both German, labels in New York. Sort of vibed with one and went with that.”

Despite his success across the globe and across the musical board (he’s DJed with the likes of Pat Mahoney–LCD Soundsystem!), Suarez is an amazingly mellow, down-to-earth guy.

“There will be days..you can’t force creativity, you can’t force any of it to work,” he admits. “A lot of times the way I write, I make a lot of crap. Not crap, but it just doesn’t work. Then in one like six hour session, everything will come together. I sort of learned you can’t hold your breath on anything, and you can’t pretend that anything you do is like, this is it, this is the one, I’m gonna make it. You just keep doing it. I did that for a bit, and it puts way too much stress on every release.”

Suarez certainly loves his music and loves to make it happen, but there seems to be an understanding that he can only do his thing, observe the effects it has on his audience and see where that takes him.

“It’s like a macro version of DJing,” he explains. “I honestly don’t really have my finger on the pulse of what’s current and what people are listening to. I do what I do, I put it out and sort of look at who’s listening to it.”

Photo credit to alliesforeveryone.com

Suarez seems to have it down pat, as this method has gotten him from unreleased tracks on German labels to DJ sets in New York City, performances at SXSW and other festivals and a continually building portfolio that doesn’t appear slated to slow down in the near future. After releasing his You &Me EP last November followed by a music video for “Feel Your Love,” Allies for Everyone has kicked off the new year with a bang and has a steady lineup in the works for 2014.

“In terms of next year, I have a bunch of releases set,” Suarez says. “I do a bunch of remixing too for folks. I have maybe two or three remixes already set for next year. I’m working on some original music with some buddies for a Swiss label.”

Whoever coined the phrase “can’t stop, won’t stop” definitely had Brian Suarez and Allies for Everyone in mind. I’m ok with that, as I find his plethora of production to be quite pleasing. Synthe on, baby.